Red Licorice
by GrandiloquentHeartlessness
Summary: "your lips used to drive me insane." early Season 4. Oneshot.


**A/N: **ohai. I wrote this very quickly on a plane. Sometimes weird inspiration is a thing, and it produces weird oneshots. Set mid season 4, just before Us and Them (so right before the awkwardly making out in a men's bathroom. lol that scene what even.)

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><p>Jude eats the last spoonful of her ice cream as the early summer sun sets over the city. She and Tommy are sitting on his couch listening to the newly finished demo of Perfect. She mouths the words along with the recording, licking the last of the ice cream from her lips and nodding as the last note dies down. "Yeah." She says, thoughtfully, looking over at Tommy. "It sounds good. I think it's the right choice for D's benefit concert. It'll work with the kids, too."<p>

Tommy nods. "I'll tell him tomorrow." he murmurs, sounding distracted. Jude notices he's been staring at her, watching her with his head tilted to the side, his eyes crinkling at the corners, lips curled slightly into a smile.

"What?" She asks, putting a hand to her face self-consciously. "What is it?"

"Nothing." He says quickly. "You're good."

"You were staring." Jude looks at him quizzically.

"Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking. Remembering something."

"Remembering what?" She frowns a little.

"Nothing bad." Tommy laughs. "Come here." She sets the bowl down on the coffee table and moves closer to him. He pulls her to him and kisses her. Her lips taste like mint chocolate chip ice cream.

She breaks the kiss, pulling back a little. "What were you thinking about?"

He rolls his eyes. "This." He kisses her again, leaning in to her, trying to deepen the kiss, but she pulls away again.

"No, really. What were you thinking about?" she asks again. She knows the repeated questioning will soon start to irritate him, but for some reason she can't let it go. Besides, he promised to be more open with her.

He smirks. "This. Really. I was thinking about kissing you."

She smiles and he leans in again, but before their lips meet she says "You said you were remembering something." He sighs and pulls away. She gives him her best puppy dog eyes. She doesn't want to annoy him, she just _really_ wants to know what's going on inside his head. She's an open book that he's always known how to read, and she often worries they'll never be on even ground in that respect, worries he'll always be a mystery to her.

"It's not important, Jude." She continues to look pleadingly at him, and he laughs again, shaking his head. "You really want to know?"

"I always want to know what you're thinking." She says earnestly.

There are times when that curiosity irritates him to no end, but now he smiles. "Fine. I was remembering…" He rubs a hand along his jaw, looking a little embarrassed. "Before we were together, I used to watch you– or, well, try not to watch you, honestly– when you were singing or talking or eating ice cream, whatever… and" He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, looking at her in a way that makes her skin tingle. He lowers his voice. "your lips used to drive me insane."

Jude laughs, surprised. "You were thinking about my mouth?"

He grins a little sheepishly. "Guilty as charged."

"Wait, when you say 'before we were together' how long ago do you mean?"

Tommy shrugs. "Long enough ago that I can remember feeling guilty about it." He hesitates, then admits "I would have dreams…" He shakes his head. "It drove me crazy. I felt like such a pervert sometimes."

Jude's face heats up, remembering times she came in to work the morning after a dream about Tommy, and found herself hopelessly flustered. She knew to an extent, back then, that she affected him too, but, for the most part, she'd always felt like she was the awkward one, the one doing the dreaming, the only one staring surreptitiously and fantasizing in secret. "Well, you hid it well."

"Did I?" He laughs. "It didn't feel like it. I guess I had to hide it, so I could stay sane. I was so… I don't know. You know as well as I do that we've always had something. But you were sixteen, Jude."

She's suddenly fierce. "Tommy, I'm not a child. I'm not too young."

"I know!" He insists. "Believe me, girl, I know. But things were different back then. I was just thinking about back when we were working on your second album and you started wearing that red lipstick all the time." He shakes his head again, remembering the double take he did the first time he saw her wearing it, the dreams and fantasies that he'd tried so hard not to have about those bright red lips.

Jude starts laughing, putting her face in her hands. "Oh my gosh, I'd forgotten about that lipstick."

"There were times I was pretty sure you were doing it to torture me." This makes Jude laugh harder, which confuses him. "Wait, what's so funny?"

She looks back up at him. Her cheeks are pink. "Nothing, just… That lipstick." She lets out another little giggle. "I bought it with Kat after I came back from tour. Jamie and I had just broken up and she wanted us to get makeovers." Tommy gives her another confused look, not seeing what's funny about that. Jude continues. "She's the one who suggested the red. I wasn't sure I could pull it off."

"Oh, you pulled it off." He laughs a little, too.

Jude shakes her head. "No, you don't understand, I wasn't going to buy it. In the end the only reason I did was because of the name." She starts laughing again, covering her face.

Tommy's back to being confused. "The name of what?"

"They name lipstick colors." she says from under her hands.

"I don't get it, what was it called?"

She looks back up at him and bites her lip. "The color was 'Red Licorice'."

His eyebrows shoot up and he laughs. "Seriously?" She nods. He shakes his head in disbelief. "No way. Red Licorice lipstick, eh?"

She lets out another giggle. "I couldn't resist it."

"So you _were _trying to torture me!" He exclaims with another laugh. "I guess red licorice lipstick explains a hell of a lot. You know licorice is my Achilles heel."

"So you didn't really fall in love with me, just my lipstick?" she teases.

He reaches out a hand, placing it on the side of her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "I fell in love with a lot more than that."

Jude's heart clenches, the rush of emotion not lessened by its familiarity. She leans in and they kiss again, the contact charged with the electricity of the years they spent suppressing their feelings. Tommy smiles against her lips and whispers "better than red licorice."

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><p>AN: yeah so basically my friend has a lipstick color called Red Licorice and how could I not think of Tommy? Also I was thinking earlier about season two and how much lipstick Jude wears in some of those episodes. I have no idea if this is good or not. (Also I for some reason wrote in present tense instead of past like I normally do?) You should let me know.


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